11th July 2005:
BBC Audiences turn to the BBC for news and analysis of the London bomb
attacks
Audiences turned to the BBC in record numbers for news and
analysis of the London Bomb Attacks that took place on 7 July last week.
The BBC News website recorded the highest volume of traffic in the
site's history on the day of the attacks, with an estimated figure of 115.7
million page impressions.
And last night's Panorama Special: London
Under Attack is the highest rating Sunday night Panorama for over a year with
an estimated 3.7m viewers.
The BBC News website figure is more than
double the previous highest figure of 50.6m page impressions, recorded on the
day of the UK election results in May this year.
And on the day
following the attacks, the site - at bbc.co.uk/news - recorded 53.7m page
impressions, now the second highest figure in the site's history.
The
most requested story was 'London rocked by terror attacks' - accessed 7.3
million times during the day. The previous record was 2.3 million - for the
result of the US Presidential Election.
At peak, the BBC News site was
receiving 40,000 page requests per second.
In the special Panorama
programme, Peter Taylor explored the terrorist threat following a year-long
investigation and reveals why it is so difficult to track the people who now
conduct attacks like those in London last week.
Peter Taylor's latest
series, The New Al-Qaeda, will be shown on BBC TWO starting on Monday 25 July
at 9.00pm.
Stories with the previous highest page impressions on
bbc.co.uk/news were:
The day of the UK general election result on 6 May
2005 – 50.6m page impressions; the day of the US presidential election
result on 3 November 2004 – 38.7m page impressions; and the day of the UK
general election on 5 May 2005 – 33.7m page impressions.
Sunday's
Panorama on the London bomb attacks was also the second highest rating edition
since 2001. The highest rating edition was Couldn't Give a XXXX for Last Orders
with 3.8m viewers, which was broadcast on 6 June 2004.
ADSL